Lanterns 4/20

    We continued working on our lanterns on Friday. We were still trying to figure out how to to make the battery connections work. We tried poking holes through the plastic to keep the coils in place, and it actually worked pretty well. But when we put the whole thing back together the LEDs still did not light up. By then I was getting pretty frustrated with the whole thing. We realized that the reason our batteries were not connecting was because the part on the inside that connected to the top of the batteries kept on shifting around inside. We had put a Lego piece in earlier to prevent that from happening, but I think we abandoned it when we put the wires in because we thought that the spring from the wires would hold it in place. The problem was that our circuit was already all soldered together, so we could not really take it apart to fix the part that kept moving around. We realized that this was a major design flaw because our whole circuit was pretty much impossible to debug, since you have to put the whole thing together to make it work. Also, it’s really hard to put together and take apart. I guess this was a learning experience?
    By then class was over and we had to present our lantern to the other groups. I was pretty disappointed that we never got ours working. Maybe we were a little too ambitious?
    Cailey and Maria’s lantern was really cool. It was made out of wood, so their living hinges looked really great. I also thought that the way that they made their switch was really clever, because it was so simple. They just pushed the top part down so that the circuit connected with the batteries.
    Essie and Frances’ lantern was also really nice. They were smart, and they spent a lot of time getting the battery case right, so they were not scrambling at the last minute to get the battery connections to work. They used transparent plastic, and engraved a lightbulb on it. I thought it was very aesthetically pleasing, but Erin thought it had too many screws.
    You can find the files for making your own version of our lanterns on our class website.
    After class I thought of a possible way that we could fix our lantern, but we need to get started on our final project. So, I might have to pursue it outside of class sometime. For our final project we are planning on making some kind of thing with paper that lights up. We wanted to make a pop-up book, but we think that might be a little too ambitious. But, here is the inspiration for our final project....